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THE MEDIA NOV_2018 - TMOL

OOH in joburg
that has been going since early 2017 and remains unresolved.
This has seriously hampered the City’s ability to act and has
caused some bad feelings between some industry players and the
City.
ADreach and the City entered into a joint venture in 2002 on
street light advertising. In March this year, the City sent ADreach a
final letter of demand to remove all advertising from street poles
across Johannesburg, saying the Joburg Property Company had
issued a notice of termination of its memorandum of agreement
with ADreach in February 2017, which ADreach had ignored.
Jack Sekgobela, operations manager for outdoor advertising
development planning at the City, told The Media Online that
the process of cleaning up the industry and dealing with illegal
billboards and other advertising has been slow, “as we still have to
take transgressors to court.
“There is a court matter to deal with which prevents us from
removing illegal signs before going to court.”
Stewart said ADreach’s “adopt a light” campaign was an add-on
to a contract which expired and ADreach
was aware from the outset that it had a
fixed term contract which was not ever
green in nature.
ADreach CEO Brad Fisher said the case
revolves around “whether the city made
a commitment to us when it was run by a
different dispensation (the ANC), or does
the current dispensation have the right to
cancel what we believe will prove was a
clear cut commitment.
“Linked to that is our determination to
prove to the City and authorities that our
contract and arrangement is a partnership with the City that has
a community commitment aspect which they refuse to honour,
and we have now reported this to higher authorities (Treasury) to
force them to give a full account of the now close to R140 million
that we have paid them for community development.”
Fisher said ADreach agreed in principle with the three major
areas the City was trying to tackle, but believed it was “making
certain exceptions for certain companies” and singling out
ADreach, which was “one of the very few that committed in black
and white to complying with all the City’s goals”.
He said one of the goals is to remove illegal sites or get money
for those, which are not offensive. “On that point, every one of
our signs was submitted to the City, which is sitting with a list and
approved each site.”
ADreach also cut down to one third of its footprint, and it
agreed with the need for industry transformation and levelling of
the playing field. “In this case, not only did ADreach far exceed
what we regard as compliance”, but also developed a platform
where small billboard companies could
collectively get to critical mass and
compete with big companies. It also got
a scheme approved to link the micro
supplier network to big companies so they
could invest in them.
It also agreed with the City’s need for
revenue enhancement and measures for it
to participate in the upside, but there were
some OOH players that didn’t even pay for
their sites.
He said that in terms of a new bylaw, the
City can just decide to remove a sign that
Mayor Herman
Mashaba’s Operation
Buya Mthetho,
which enforces
bylaws, ensures that
media owners act
responsibly
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